by Brad Parker

It must be some sort of quirk of human nature.  But many, many people I meet overestimate their fitness level or skill level.

Is it a weird sort of denial?  Or is it a some twisted attempt to impress people?  

For example, I'm talking with a woman I'd estimate to be about 40 years old.  We are discussing self-defense and she waves a hand in my face and blurts, "Oh I don't need any self-defense classes, my ex-husband used to be a black belt."   For a moment I thought that I had misinterpreted her comment and that SHE was a black belt.  But l had heard correctly.  Somehow the black belt level skills of one spouse can be transferred to another.  Even if they have been divorced for some years.

Or another one.  I'm in a law enforcement academy and we are preparing for the course segment on weapon retention (this academy is for new cadets and is not for instructors).  One of the academy instructors asks if anyone is a martial artist.   A hand goes up.  The instructor asks the cadet to come up to the head of the class and demonstrate how he (the cadet) would defend his gun from being grabbed from behind.  The cadet drops into a low stance, hesitates for a painfully long time and then stammers that he doesn't know what to do.  "I was a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do when I was 13 years-old", he sheepishly announces.  

I'm socializing with a married couple at a friend's.  The wife ends up asking what I do.  I tell them and they are both very interested in how we train and some of the ways we work with students at seminars.  The husband puffs up his chest and tells me, "Yeah, well I used to play football!"   He comes in for one class.  We are practicing takedowns and controlling people on the ground, there is no hitting involved.  He has to stop in the middle of class and throws up out the back door.  Turns out he played high school football almost 20 years ago.  That's it, nothing else since then. 

Another one sticks out.  My partner and I are sitting in the front row of a cage match tournament where one of our students was fighting.  This tournament was of a fairly high-level regional level of talent so there was some skilled fighters and some tough matches.  Throughout the evening, a guy to my left was booing the fighters and yelling derogatory comments.  Usually you get some of that from a group of drunks, but this guy was by himself and sober.  Eventually he flipped open his cell phone to take a call from someone and announced loudly into the phone, "These fights SUCK!  These guys are just a bunch of pussies, it's not like a real street fight at all!"   Now my teeth were really on edge and I turned to the guy and asked him where he trained.  He looked shocked.  "Oh, I don't train," he says.  I nodded and then asked him, "When was your last fight?"  He leaned back away from me looking surprised.  "Fight? I've never been in a fight".  I think the words coming out of his own mouth probably had more of an impact than anything else I could say.  Needless to say he was quiet for the rest of the matches until the intermission when he left and never returned to his seat. 

Finally, and maybe most telling, I'm at the range to do my annual law enforcement requalification shoot.  There is a substantial amount of swaggering going on before the class.  I'm hearing talk of all the practice that has been going on, some bets about shooting 240s (a qualifying score is 210, a perfect score is 250) and a little bit of trash talking between some guys (I'm using that generically because one of the biggest trash talkers was a female officer).  We have a few warm up shots with our duty ammo (issued last year).  There's still a lot of testosterone in the air.   We are ordered to load all of our magazines and get ready for the test.  It will be a series of timed segments with the officers required to perform various reloads and clearance drills (when your weapon is jammed with two cartridges or an empty casing).  It gets quiet -- then the test begins.  Targets are turning, shots are fired, and the targets turn away.  Targets turn again, magazines are being dropped, there is fumbling going on, cursing on the line.  It is obvious that people are failing the clearance drills.  Some are failing them two and three times in a row.  The test continues and when the targets turn away for the last time, expressions of anguish.  Scores are counted up.  Some of the biggest talkers are stunned.  One guy shoots a 190.  Another shoots a 205.  Still another shoots a 185.   There's another that squeaks by with 210.

The point that I'm trying to make is that we should all try and avoid the very common human trait of overestimating our levels of fitness and skills.   Unfortunately personal combat is a very, very intense and exhausting activity.  As your heartbeats per minute increase, your ability to think and perform complex tasks diminishes.  Even as your fighting ability degrades, you need to be able to continue the fight for one, two, maybe even three minutes. (The longest real fight that I know of was a seven-minute fight that one of the toughest cops I know of had one time and he literally could not move for about two minutes after backup arrived to take in the subject).

If you do not have the physical capability of fighting for three minutes straight, you risk complete shut down and you can be stomped into oblivion by your opponent.